Press Releases

Ruth Jacobs the author of Soul Destruction: Unforgivable has donated 30 signed copies of her latest book to the survivors’ book club at Sextrade101, Canada’s most prominent organisation supporting sex trade survivors and providing public awareness and education. ‘Soul Destruction: Unforgivable’ shines a light on the world of prostitution and drug addiction, with a realistic exposé of what many women and girls encounter in the sex industry including rape, physical violence and other abuse, as well as showing what many have suffered before entering or being forced into prostitution: physical and sexual abuse in childhood, with some survivors having been victims of child sex abuse images.

This was made possible by friends of Ruth in the Information Security industry where she once worked, sponsoring the donation and ensuring that Sextrade101 can have the books to use with the people they work closely with and help. Before becoming the Founder and Executive Director of Sextrade101 and a Professor in the Police Foundations program at Humber College, Canada, Natasha Falle was trafficked for a decade from the age of 15. She has since helped hundreds of others exit the sex trade. With most books and films glamorising prostitution and the myth of the ‘happy hooker’ – negating the experiences of most survivors – Natasha wanted the women attending the Sextrade101 book club to read a realistic portrayal of life in prostitution, giving them the opportunity to get to know characters who would resonate with them and validate their own experiences.

The donation of 30 paperback copies of Soul Destruction: Unforgivable to Sextrade101 – means that one will go to every survivor in their book club. Supporters of Ruth’s charity fundraising and campaigning for women in prostitution as well as her writing, her friends from the Information Security industry are aware of the link between child abuse and prostitution, with 75% of women in prostitution having suffered physical and sexual abuse in their childhoods, which for some included being the victims of child sex abuse images – the crime that key Information Security organisations are working to eliminate.

“Organisations like Sextrade101, which are survivor led and run, are able to reach out and help women and girls who have been abused in prostitution, and often suffered childhood abuse, in a way that only other survivors can; they can identify with their experiences and understand their trauma. With 70% of women in prostitution having suffered multiple rapes, which most often are not reported to the police for fear of being charged with something related to prostitution, or not being believed, or being blamed, or even losing custody of their children, these women share countless injustices. This is the story of Soul Destruction: Unforgivable – a group of women in prostitution have been raped by the same client, a serial rapist, as most who rape women in prostitution are, and the women are unable to turn to the police, but desperate to do something to stop him.” Ruth said.

On Ruth’s current campaign, pushing for the Merseyside model, which makes crimes against people in prostitution hate crimes, she says, “The sex trade will never be a safe place, but this is a way to make it less dangerous, ensuring more serial rapists and other criminals are locked up and off the streets. By this not being adopted throughout the UK, but only in Merseyside, it is as if rape and other violence against people in the sex trade is deemed an occupational hazard. People in prostitution need and deserve the human right of the full protection of the law and recourse to justice when they have been the victim of a crime. They need to know that they can bring prosecutions against any person who violates them in any way and right now, in most of the UK, and most of the world, this isn’t the case.”

Co-founder at Sextrade 101, Bridget Perrier said, “We at Sextrade101 feel that the novel Soul Destruction: Unforgivable was written in real raw truths without the glamorisation of prostitution. Sextrade101 is a group of past and current survivors of sexual exploitation and prostitution. Sextrade101 would like to thank Ruth Jacobs and her publisher for the generous donation of books for Sextrade101 Committee members. The committee members have been reviewing this novel at our monthly book club and the feedback and discussions have been insightful in passionate self-discovery and reliability.

We at Sextrade101 strongly believe that everyone should be shown a viable way out of the sex trade, not encouraged to stay in it. We believe in helping people understand the full picture of life in prostitution before they get involved, and in helping women get out alive, with their minds, bodies, and lives in tact.

We have lost many sisters internationally to the sex industry and yet there still are those trapped and enslaved in this cycle of oppression and violence. We yet have succumbed to the silencing and now feel the need to speak about the real truths surrounding exploitation and prostitution.”

The first novel in Ruth Jacobs’ harrowing and realistic series of prostitution and drug addiction – Soul Destruction: Unforgivable – is released on April 29th. The novel charts the life of Shelley Hansard, a call girl haunted by an abusive childhood, and hooked on heroin and crack which is fuelling her psychosis.

Since studying prostitution in the late 1990s, Ruth had an idea for a novel in her mind. At the age of thirty-six, in 2010, she began writing and a little under a year later, Soul Destruction: Unforgivable, the first novel in the series was complete.

In July 2012, Ruth published ‘In Her Own Words… Interview with a London Call Girl’, which is the transcription of a video interview she undertook in 1998 with a woman who worked as a London call girl. All the royalties from this short publication are being donated to Beyond the Streets, a charity working to end sexual exploitation. Between the UK and US Amazon websites, In Her Own Words… Interview with a London Call Girl has received numerous five star reviews.

Maintaining contact with women who have exited prostitution is essential to Ruth as a writer and campaigner. On her Soul Destruction website www.soul-destruction.com, she has collated a number of their stories on a page named Voices of Prostitution Survivors.

As well as drawing on her research, Ruth has firsthand experience of many of the topics she writes about such as posttraumatic stress disorder, rape, and drug and alcohol addiction.

Ruth’s lead character, Shelly Hansard, lives a complex double-life which is blasted deeper into chaos when a client dies in the suite of a leading London hotel. In her psychotic state, the skills required to keep up her multiple personas are weakening. Amidst her few friends, and what remains of her broken family, she struggles to maintain her wall of lies. During this tumultuous time, Shelley is presented with an opportunity to take revenge on a client who raped her and her friends. But in her unbalanced state of mind, can she stop a serial rapist?

“The entertainment industry has glamorised the world of prostitution and made it almost seem to be an empowerment choice for women. But the truth for many, many women out there is that they are caught in a spiral of abuse, often involving drug addiction, and for some, they are controlled by pimps selling them for sex to line their own pockets. Movies such as ‘Pretty Woman’ have distorted the reality that women in prostitution in real life are often beaten, raped and trapped in a cycle of abuse.” Ruth commented.

Soul Destruction: Unforgivable is published by Caffeine Nights and released on April 29th.

Ruth Jacobs lives a quiet life in a small village in Hertfordshire, England, which is quite a contrast from her teens and early twenties spent rather waywardly in London. She has two sons, two rescue cats, and a rescue Lurcher who follows her around like a shadow.

Inspired by her maternal grandmother, Clara Ellis, who was also a writer, Ruth had been writing since the age of thirteen. However, during the years that she wrote sporadically, Ruth had never completed a novel.

Review copies in all eBook formats and paperback are available upon request.

Soul Destruction: Unforgivable is published in eBook format: ISBN – 978-1-907565-36-6 from £1.95

In Her Own Words… Interview with a London Call Girl by Ruth Jacobs – In Association with Beyond the Streets

Rising author Ruth Jacobs has released In Her Own Words… Interview with a London Call Girl

In Her Own Words is the unedited transcript from an interview Ruth undertook with a London call girl in the late 1990s. It is an enlightening and moving, firsthand account of a woman’s life affected by prostitution, exposing the emotional, psychological and social effects of living that existence. All royalties from this publication are being donated to Beyond the Streets, a charity helping women exit prostitution.

It’s important to Ruth to be able to dispel the ‘happy hooker’ myth and expose the dark world and the harsh reality of life as a call girl. ‘The media have glamorised prostitution at the level of being a call girl. I want people to know that being a call girl is not glamorous. Of course, on the outside it is, but the damage to the woman is the same whether the sexual act is for a few hundred or thousand pounds in a five-star hotel, or for ten pounds in an alley or the back of a car.’

Says Ruth, ‘Beyond the Streets are doing a great thing – they are making sure that a dialogue is kept open about the issues at hand. They also work with a great number of other charities and projects doing exactly the same work, helping women exit prostitution. That’s why I was keen to team up with them for this publication. I’m donating all royalties I make on the book to them. I think it’s also important to note that research shows that nine out of ten women working in prostitution would like to exit if they could.’

Note to Editors

Caffeine Nights recently announced that they will be publishing Ruth’s debut novel, Soul Destruction, in 2013.

In preparation for the launch of her book, Soul Destruction, novelist Ruth Jacobs embarks on a new blog

The blog – Soul Destruction Diary – is written in the voice of Nicole O’Connell, Shelley Hansard’s closest friend in the first book. Nicole, a call girl from London, travels to Sydney, Australia, in the hope she will break her heroin habit. The diary charts Nicole’s time there – the numerous people she meets and the situations, some dangerous and life threatening, in which she finds herself. Within days of arriving, she meets a fellow junky, Lorna, and is back on smack. Lorna appears on the outside to be a good friend to Nicole, but there are things about Lorna, Nicole is yet to learn. Mickey, who Nicole meets at Manly Beach, falls in love with her. But can he save her from Lorna? And most of all, can he save her from herself?

Ruth Jacobs comments, “My plan is to write and publish between three to seven new blog posts each week for the next few months on www.soul-destruction.com. Each will be a short diary entry and once complete, the diary will form a new novel.”

The book will form part of the Soul Destruction series, the first of which follows Shelley Hansard, a crack-psychotic, heroin-addicted, London call girl who gets the opportunity to take revenge on a client who raped her.

Sophie Lambert, Director at Tibor Jones & Associates (www.tiborjones.com) says, “I can’t help but be incredibly impressed by Ruth’s frankness and honesty and the clear passion with which she writes.”

Jane Frankland, The Go2 Expert, (www.jane-frankland.com) who encouraged Ruth to promote herself and her novels through blogging says, “Ruth has drawn much from a dissertation she undertook on prostitution. She spent time, and undertook interviews, with three call girls. One of these interviews has been transcribed and is available on her blog.”

Ruth adds, “Recent times have seen prostitution glamorised by the media. That at least 75% of prostitutes have been sexually and physically abused as children is the reality. 70% of prostitutes have experienced multiple rapes. At least 67% of prostitutes meet the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder. These are the facts and they are far from glamorous.”

The Soul Destruction novel and diary tell it as it is – soul destroying. Ruth’s writing is gritty, her characters are real and accessible, her stories are well told, and each blog will leave you wanting more. Ruth is enjoying great reviews since launching.